The Lucky Beans Beach House

Formerly owned by a Broadway superstar,
the Miller home provides a life in the sun for a couple from Sun Valley.

Leah Muller designed this inviting alcove in the master suite, perfect for curling up and reading or simply daydreaming.

It’s not every day that someone knows they’ve found the perfect house within minutes of walking through the front door, yet that’s what happened to John Miller three years ago. After a quick tour of the first floor he took the stairs two at a time to the second, where he counted the number of bedrooms and knew the oceanfront property was just what he had been looking for.

Never mind that John’s wife Kris was a California girl who hoped one day they would return to Newport Beach where she had spent her early years, and happy memories of family still living there kept tugging at her heart. However, when Realtor Bevin Mugford of Peters Carlton & Mugford Real Estate showed the couple the former home of Broadway superstar Bernadette Peters, Kris couldn’t help but get caught up in her husband’s excitement. “We loved the setting, the light and the potential to recreate a beach house for our growing children,” she enthuses. “My daughter had just starred in the play Annie and we loved the idea that someone like Bernadette Peters had once walked the halls. Her husband Michael Wittenberg had been in the process of post-hurricane renovations when he was killed in a helicopter crash while on a business trip to Europe.”

After Wittenberg’s death, Peters rarely returned to Vero Beach, had no desire to continue with the renovations and finally decided to put the house up for sale. The actress had chosen the house for the same reasons the Millers did, with privacy and living on the beach topping the list.

The two-story Indian River Shores residence sits on more than an acre of land at the end of a winding, oak-canopied road in a gated community east of AIA that few people know even exists. Just north of the Village Shops it is close to John’s Island where the Millers have family. Without that connection the couple would probably never have discovered Vero Beach or their “funky and fun beachside home.”